Peyton Helm: Anxiety over today's generation unnecessary worry

Opinion: Don't worry about today's generation taking charge

Despair over the character and behavior of each generation of students is well attested throughout history, beginning about 4,000 years ago. An Egyptian scribe lambasted his generation's schoolboys: "… thou forsakest writing! Thou givest thyself up to pleasures. Thou goest from street to street where it smelleth of beer."

The fourth century A.D. philosopher Libanius complained that his students disrupted his lectures by laughing, chatting about chariot-races, singing popular songs and "picking their noses with both hands at once."

In 1790, the Rev. Enos Hitchcock complained that "the free access which many young people have to romances, novels and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth."

In 1816, the Times of London inveighed against "the indecent foreign dance called the Waltz. … It is quite sufficient to cast one's eyes on the voluptuous intertwining of the limbs, and close compressure of the bodies … We feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion."

In 1859, Scientific Americanopined "a pernicious excitement to learn and play chess has spread all over the country. … A mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements."

And in 1915, Gail Harrison admonished, "We seem to have dropped into an age of entertaining … whether it be mechanical toys for the 5-year old or moving-picture plays for the 16-year-old. It not only destroys their power to think, but also makes happiness, contentment and resourcefulness impossible."

This year's Muhlenberg College dean's list honorees represent the latest (and therefore presumably the most degraded) manifestation of what the critic and literary theorist Northrop Frye once called "The Great Western Butterslide" — the common belief that Western civilization has been steadily deteriorating since … well, since forever.

One mathematically minded commentator has calculated that if each generation since the Sumerians has seen a 5 percent decline in virtue, then today's generation of students is only three one-hundred-thousandths as virtuous as the Sumerian youth of 1700 BCE … leaving them essentially devoid of any virtue whatsoever.

This is harsh, and certainly cannot be true of Muhlenberg's dean's list students, who have excelled intellectually, and, at least for the most part, avoided "the streets that smelleth of beer."

What's worse, the critics are now blaming colleges as well as students for the decline of standards, values and morals.

Recently, William Deresiewicz published "Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite & The Way to a Meaningful Life," whichtakes higher education to task for "[manufacturing] students who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they're doing but with no idea why they're doing it."

Apparently, not only are students damned if they are beer-swilling slackers; but if they work hard, play by the rules and excel in the classroom they are nothing more than excellent sheep! And, whichever path they choose, our colleges and universities are complicit in greasing the great butterslide to their perdition.

To which I reply: nonsense. I have known too many Muhlenberg students, too many Muhlenberg alumni, too many graduates of our country's other leading liberal arts institutions and too many professors to take these critiques for anything more than dyspeptic attempts to cash in on the real problem. That problem is society's deep anxiety about its future, and our tendency — a tendency shared by the human race across many cultures and millennia — to project that anxiety onto the rising generation. Every generation has had its worries. I'm confident that in a few decades today's students will be despairing about the ability of their children to cope with whatever challenges are uppermost in their minds at the time.

I may be a minority of one, but I'm not worried about them. They are not sheep, they are not slackers, they are too intellectually tough and resilient to be ruined by waltzes, chess, mechanical toys, movies, novels, or plays or by whatever else modern times will throw at them. As long as they continue to ask tough questions, challenge received wisdom, hone their analytical skills through the clash of ideas and make connections between ancient verities and new insights, they will do just fine — and so will the rest of us.

Peyton R. Helm is president of Muhlenberg College. This piece is based on a dean's list convocation address he gave Sunday.